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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!lll-winken.llnl.gov!hookup!news.mathworks.com!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!dispatch.news.demon.net!demon!palmer.demon.co.uk!palmer.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail From: gary@palmer.demon.co.uk (Gary Palmer) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: PPP and/or SLIP logins under simulated Internet etc. Date: 24 Oct 1995 23:20:28 +0100 Organization: none Lines: 38 Message-ID: <46jorc$5db@palmer.demon.co.uk> References: <46caa9$sdr@oznet07.ozemail.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: pc.my.org X-NNTP-Posting-Host: palmer.demon.co.uk In article <46caa9$sdr@oznet07.ozemail.com.au>, Hanns B. Wetzel <hbw@ozemail.com.au> wrote: >Recently I purchased the Walnut Creek FreeBSD 2.0.5 cdroms and >installed it on a 520MB HDD on my 486DX2-50 intel box with 20MB >ram.The system appears to be running fairly well. Very stable in >text mode, but it does suffer from random hangs under X11 R6 3.1.1 >when running xearth in the background. When that happens, it stops >dead completely. No response to Ctrl-Alt-Backspace or any other key(s) >or mouse. Turning off the power is then the only way to get things >going again. Sounds like you have run out of swap space. Check /var/log/messages to see if you get messages like: Oct 19 03:27:13 palmer kernel: Process 4650 killed by vm_fault -- out of swap What happens is that the X server tries to allocate more memory, but VM is exhausted, and the VM system kills it off as a potential memory hog run wild. Unfortunately, the X server doesn't return control of the console to the kernel, and the keyboard / screen are useless. If you have a ethernet connection you could quite probably telnet in and use the machine perfectly well. You could probably even run `startx' and get X working on the console again, although you couldn't switch back to text mode. Soultion: either a) install XFree86 3.1.2 (which uses GNUMalloc and is less memory intensive) b) Increase your swapspace c) don't run as many programs (esp. graphically intensive ones like XEarth). Hope this helps Gary